I hear, I see, I discover.

Category: Films

The Post, although it’s going to win loads of awards (and already has a few), isn’t one of Steven Spielberg’s best, but that’s praising with faint damnation. This is Spielberg we’re talking about here; he’s probably one of the greatest living film-makers.

Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks were as solid as ever, and it was an excellent period piece, but the first half was somehow overly-expositionary without explaining stuff well enough for people who aren’t already up on their American political history. Basically, they spent too long setting the plot up, before it became good.

The opening Vietnam battle scene, was as atmospheric as you’d expect from the guy behind Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but I wasn’t even sure until afterwards whose perspective the audience were meant to be following, and it felt like it came from a different film entirely – the rest of the film is composed entirely of dialogue scenes.

This was a problem throughout the early stages of the film. It felt disjointed, as if the dominos were being set up in time for the second half to begin. (Hehe, a ‘domino theory’ joke.)

Also, the final scene, in which some guy interrupts a burglary at a certain hotel, didn’t fit logically into the film’s events at all. Although critical to the downfall of the film’s villain, Richard Nixon, there didn’t seem to be an obvious link to the Pentagon Papers, other than to show the length and breadth of Nixon’s corruption following his threats of reprisal against The Washington Post. (As a point of curiosity, were those telephone conversations genuine Nixon tape recordings, of which I understand quite a few were made, or an actor? EDIT: Yes, apparently they were genuine.)

How would I have improved the film? By which I guess I mean how would I have done it better than Steven Goddamn Spielberg? Well, my partner thinks it went on way too long. I’m inclined to go the other way. It could have benefited from being longer, but spending more time making us care about the characters (although Streep’s character development was done nicely), maybe conveying the importance of the historical events that characters referred to in passing (but then, this is a major period of modern US history that I assume an American audience is more acquainted with than someone from this side of the Atlantic). Also, courtroom drama. Injunctions were sought and fought and this case got to the Supreme Court of the United States, only for the film to skip over most of the arguments and then provide the result via telephone/telex in the newsroom. Spielberg can do controversial American history courtroom drama, as demonstrated in Amistad. It’s a shame we didn’t see some of that, even heavily fictionalised, here.

The film was clearly topical (and Spielberg’s said as much), with the Trump administration’s hostility to the press in its sights. Aside from several mentions of the First Amendment when discussing whether or not to publish the Pentagon Papers, this is emphasised in a slightly on-the-nose comment that Streep makes towards the end about the press being ‘the rough first draft of history’, and that even if it doesn’t always get it right, it still needs to do its job. The Post was in production for less than a year. Maybe if Spielberg had spent as much time on it as he does his other films, it would have been a more polished film.

As a final note, I spent ages trying to work out if the Washington Post lawyer that turns up midway through the film was being played by Matt Damon or not, because it didn’t look quite like Matt Damon, but then it did, and then it didn’t, and then… and then Bob Odenkirk (Saul Goodman from Better CallSaul and Breaking Bad)appeared in the same scene and I realised it was Meth Damon wearing a suit.

Hey, I didn’t think I’d get to re-use the promo image from Olympus Has Fallen quite so soon. Not trying to draw any equivalence between the two films, honest.

This wasn’t the best Star Wars film, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. (That would be The Phantom Menace, largely because it was so close to being a good film, but failed abysmally at almost every stage.)

The film’s biggest weakness was its poor pacing. This film was 2.5 hours long, but with the rejigging of a couple of plot points, could have been dropped to 2 hours; a film-length chase scene isn’t exciting unless it’s got the intensity of Mad Max: Fury Road. The entire final battle scene (which was, in itself, very good, and contained some lovely call-backs to the Battle of Hoth) should have been brought forward thirty minutes.

Finn and Rose’s mission to Space Monaco was a bit of a missed opportunity. While it served to expand on the First Order/Resistance era of the Star Wars setting, some parts of it just felt a bit… well… prequel trilogy. I guess that that’s what Rian Johnson was going for at times, with the child slaves and the racing and all that, but there’s no reason to bring the bad bits along. But at least slavery was actually portrayed as a bad thing in The Last Jedi, rather than just an obstacle in Qui-Gon Jin’s discovery of Jesus Skywalker.

The other big let-down with The Last Jedi is that it was saddled with the same characters as The Force Awakens. Don’t get me wrong – they were great characters, but they were created for Episode 7, not Episode 8. The main plot of the film explored Rey’s personal journey, and Kylo Ren’s parallel degeneration. However, the subplots felt like the writers were scrabbling around for something for Finn and Poe to do (other than each other, which didn’t actually happen – sorry, Tumblr).

There were loads of opportunities to mention midi-chlorians, but they never did. I wonder if this was because Luke wasn’t taught properly and so understanding of midi-chlorians never really made it through into the modern setting’s understanding of the Force, after the Emperor killed off virtually every other Force-user during the age of the Empire. Or maybe Johnson just tacitly acknowledged that midi-chlorians are bantha-balls.

The characterisation of Rey, Kylo Ren and General Hux were high points, along with the 30-year check-in on how Luke’s character has been developing. Kylo Ren and Hux were both particularly good, with both of them being deeply flawed individuals, neither of whom are actually well-suited for their roles. I look forward to seeing how they cope with working together in the next film; the First Order military have demonstrated they don’t respect Ren and Hux has shown that he’s willing but incapable of breaking away from domination by Ren.

Visually, the film was marvellous. The ‘bloody’ footprints on the salt flat made for some extremely stark colour contrasts when the red under-layer was exposed as the white crust was disturbed. (This phenomenon also provides a clue to a major plot event towards the climax of the film, as well as looking rather gruesome a few seconds later when a character gets targeted by heavy blaster fire.) Vice-Admiral Holdo’s crowning moment of awesome was beautiful, its visuals enhanced by the complete lack of sound at the key moment. The final shot with the kid with the broom, although possibly a bit cheesy, was also very nicely done.

Overall, despite not being the best Star Wars film, it’s still better than anything in the prequel trilogy, and does contain some incredible moments that more than make up for its weaker elements.

My partner and I went to see Wonder Woman last night. Short review: I thought it was great and I look forward to seeing more of Diana.

As with my previous ‘review’ of Rogue One, this’ll be presented more as a bullet-pointed list of thoughts than a coherent essay or article about the film.

This list will contain spoilers, but I’ve tried to keep them mild.

The Setting

A superhero popcorn movie in something as emotive as World War One is always going to be a tough sell. World War Two has been simplified into straightforward good versus evil of Allies & Axis, which had to be fought and was a resounding victory for the good guys. (And our favourite Uncle Joe Stalin, but we’ll gloss over that…) This bowdlerisation is such that Captain America and the Red Skull can exchange punches without it feeling… off. The First World War though is characterised in the popular consciousness as being a morally-neutral disaster – see the concerns over the video game Battlefield 1 being set in 1914-18, when dozens of first-person shooters, including Battlefield, but also the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor (remember them?) have done 1939-45 without more than a mumble of discontent. However, Wonder Woman pulls it off; it gets close, because she spends the entire film blaming Ares for corrupting the Germans into starting the war (the ‘Hitler Was A Vampire’ trope), but the reveal that actually, humans are just fond of killing each other keeps the blame for the war pinned firmly on real world politics. That the film is set during the dying days of the war, when both sides are trying to negotiate the Armistice, probably helps. Wonder Woman’s not going to be leading the Americans into Berlin here

Misogyny. Lots of casual misogyny, particularly in the London sequence. However, Diana being Diana, she just looks confused and carries on doing whatever it was she was doing. Also, no one gets protective or dismissive of Diana by the end of the film. Being an actual demi-goddess helps, I suppose. The horrendously sexist attitudes of, for example, the British commanders and politicians, although appearing ridiculously overdone, weren’t that implausible for the era. A female police constable appears in a crowd scene in the film, stood beside her male colleague/bodyguard. Thousands of women served as volunteer constables during the war, to allow male officers to fight at the front, but a Metropolitan Police official was asked in 1916 if he ever saw women being taken on permanently. His reply was: “No, not even if the war lasts fifty years.”

There was a recent episode of Doctor Who in which Bill (who is black) was cautious about leaving the TARDIS in 1814 London (“Slavery is totally still a thing,”) and is pleasantly surprised when she does look around the streets: “Regency England, a bit more black than they show in the movies.” The Doctor’s reply is, “So was Jesus. History is a whitewash.” Aside from several non-white civilians, the London crowd scenes in Wonder Woman make a point of showing the ethnic diversity of the war effort. We see non-white troops from multiple nations. I’m not hot enough on the uniforms to identify the nations, but I presume one of the groups of Asian soldiers were the Indian Army, some others appeared to be from a Sikh regiment, and there was a black soldier at the docks that looked to be wearing British Army uniform (black British soldiers served alongside white comrades in the First World War, although non-whites were barred from becoming officers – there were several exceptions though). Of course, he may have been from the Caribbean or African colonies, but he appeared to be on his own rather than a part of a group.

The ethnic diversity continues into Steve’s team, who are all (or mostly anyway) existing characters from the Wonder Woman comic canon. Sameer is Moroccan (and makes a point of highlighting his skin colour as a reason why his acting career has never taken off), Chief is a native American (who mentions to Diana that it was Steve’s people who took everything from his during their last war), and, well, okay, you don’t get much whiter than the Scottish Ewen Bremner.

Visually, the film portrays its era very well. A historian might pick holes in some bits and pieces, but it feels right.

The action scenes don’t fetishise automatic weapons in a way that some First World War portrayals I’ve seen have done. Even World War Two films and games fall prey to that urge, when rifles were still the most common armament for infantry soldiers. Dakka might look and sound good on screen, but it detracts from the feel of the era.

Interestingly, the two German tanks seen towards the end of the film are not historically inaccurate. Yes, they’re clearly British tanks painted up in German colours (possibly the same props seen in British colours in earlier scenes), but the Germans actually fielded more captured British tanks than they built of their own. (For comparison, the Germans fielded fifty tanks during the war, only twenty of which were of German design, while Britain and France fielded literally thousands of tanks between them.)

Finally, how often do you get a superhero film set in Belgium?

Diana / Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman doesn’t get referred to as such during this film. I haven’t seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Unnecessary Subtitles, but apparently it was the media in that film that gave Diana that name.

Gal Gadot is excellently cast. She looks the part and plays it well too. I’m not sure what more I can say about her than that I definitely want to see more Wonder Woman.

Born Sexy Yesterday is a trope (explained in more detail behind the link) in which a science fiction character, almost always female, is portrayed in a sexualised way, despite being either naive to the ways of the world (a mermaid come ashore, for example) or literally being born yesterday (Leeloo in The Fifth Element comes to mind, but it’s also the central conceit of Weird Science and its sub-genre of nerdy wish-fulfilment movies). Diana brushes against that trope, in that she’s an outsider to the world beyond Themyscira, but her naivety is emphasised as idealism, rather than foolish cluelessness. There are also a few moments where that same naivety is used to highlight the hypocrisy or prudishness of the mortal world, such as her continuous criticisms of women’s dress in 1918. It helps that the scene in Selfridges was also very funny.

However, my partner was rubbed up the wrong way by an early conversation between Steve and Diana, prompted by Steve’s awkwardness over their sleeping arrangements on the small boat they take from Themyscira. Diana appears ignorant of the idea of marriage and relationships, yet in the comics she’s mentioned having relationships on Themyscira. (A quote from the comics: ‘So, let me get this straight, you’re from a paradise island of science fiction lesbians, with a side of bondage?’) The conversation is explicitly about marriage before sleeping with someone in the literal, as well as euphemistic, sense, and that marriage was part of the natural sequence of then having children, growing old together and being happy with one other person forever. As Steve readily admits, it doesn’t always work out like that. At the time, I read the conversation as saying that Themyscira simply didn’t have the same rigid family structures as the mortal world; they were more communal, egalitarian or whatever, but there’s also the reading that the film was saying same-sex couplings can’t have proper relationships or families. It was explicitly stated earlier in the film that Diana was the only child on the island, moulded from clay by her mother and given life by Zeus, so that’d suggest family and relationships are treated very differently there than in our world (or at least, our world in 1918). I think I’d have to watch this scene again, but since I’ll probably pick up Wonder Woman on Blu-Ray when it comes out, no problem with that.

Oh yeah, the bondage comment above? The creator of Wonder Woman was bigly into that sort of thing. Why do you think Diana’s lasso makes people tell the truth? It was also a common feature of the early comics that Diana would end up getting tied up and taunted by villains. The film avoids all that, but I do think that a moment in the climactic fight scene was a nod towards the character’s history: Ares pins Diana to the ground with a length of telekinetically-hurled tank track and villain-monologues at her. However, the scene is not played for eroticism, but as an obstacle for Diana to overcome.

Speaking of the lasso, and of the Wonder Woman get-up itself, the bright colours worked marvellously in the otherwise muted and muddy scenes in Belgium, particularly during the incredible moment where she climbs that ladder into No Man’s Land. (As a side note, they weren’t explicit with it, but when characters described it as ‘No Man’s Land’, the audience knew full well what was going to happen next.)

The No Man’s Land scene is what happened next. You know those bits in superhero films where the film manages to sell precisely who or what the hero is? When Spiderman loses his mask during the train sequence and the New Yorkers just give it him back, promise not to tell anyone what they saw, and then try and protect him from Doc Ock? Or when Superman lands a crashing plane safely onto a baseball pitch and the crowd go wild, and then he mentions to the passengers that flying is still statistically the safest way to travel? No Man’s Land was that scene for Wonder Woman (and Patti Jenkins had to fight to keep it in the film!). It’s the scene where she ceases to just be a naive idealist with a few nifty superpowers, and becomes a goddess who inspires all who witness her. From the moment she sets foot on that ladder, the air in the cinema got very dusty. The aftermath sequence in the liberated village was a wonderful respite from the war and showed the human side of the conflict.

And what happens later is just cruel, but a necessary part of Diana’s journey to discovering that not everything evil in the world is the fault of Ares.

Steve Trevor

Chris Pine put in a solid performance of what, in any other film, would have been a two-fisted pulp hero. Wonder Woman manages to still give him time in the spotlight to do his dashing spy stuff, without detracting from Diana’s own plot and character arc. In fact, strip out the superhero stuff on both the good guys’ and the bad guys’ sides, and you’re left with a perfectly serviceable pulp spy/action movie about Steve Trevor and his buddies shooting and punching their way across Belgium.

He even manages to be the love interest who inspires the protagonist. Holy gender-flip, Batman!

Hell, since this film is set in 1918, if it weren’t for the fact that this film forms an end-point for his character arc, you could probably get some mileage out of a Steve Trevor spin-off. Think of it as Biggles for an American audience.

Using a real-world historical figure as the main villain was another bit that could have turned out badly. For a start, Danny Huston looks absolutely nothing like Ludendorff. Furthermore, the historical Ludendorff (alongside Hindenberg) pushed the Kaiser to seek peace, unlike the version presented in the film, who was convinced that Germany could still win in late 1918. Again though, the film made it work.

It helps that Ludendorff is one of history’s bad guys anyway – he was a leading proponent of the ‘stabbed in the back’ myth about Germany’s 1918 defeat and took part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Film-Ludendorff believed that war was the foundation of human civilisation (thus placing him firmly into worship of Ares, even if he didn’t realise it). Interestingly, this aligns fairly closely with real-Ludendorff’s beliefs. He was a social Darwinist who venerated war as a driver of societal advancement. Ironically, he did allegedly convert to the worship a pagan god, specifically the Norse Odin/Wotan, after the war. He also believed that Jews had conspired to undermine the German war effort by seeking profit ahead of patriotism, and condemned Christians as weak. So, yeah, he was pretty much a perfect fit for the Nazi party.

When I see Danny Huston though, I will always see him as the jazz musician/axe murderer from American Horror Story: Coven. Maybe the film-makers tried giving him real-Ludendorff’s little kaiser-moustache, but decided it didn’t suit him.

Ludendorff turns on his own government, to the extent of murdering the rest of High Command when they try to negotiate the German surrender on behalf of the Kaiser. Sure, it’s a way of making clear that the film isn’t trying to tar the entire other side with the crimes of its supervillain, but the Red Skull also turned on the Third Reich in Captain America: The First Avenger. At least there it set up Hydra as being a separate organisation that could succeed the Third Reich, but it just didn’t feel necessary in Wonder Woman.

The jovial way in which he and Dr Poison laughed as they killed his colleagues also felt a bit out of character – at no other point during the film did Ludendorff express any positive emotions.

Hang on, fridge logic kicking in… It can’t possibly have escaped anyone’s notice that a dozen senior German officers had died in a horrible poison gas attack, and yet dozens of equally senior German officers bring their wives along to Ludendorff’s gala later in the film. Really? Even if Ludendorff had covered up his murders as a freak accident, surely they’d have been a bit more circumspect in accepting his invitation.

Ludendorff shoots one of his junior officers dead fairly early in the film as punishment for not preventing Steve Trevor from stealing Dr Poison’s notebook and blowing up her lab. As noted, Ludendorff is a rogue element within the Imperial German Army, but at this stage he was still overtly loyal to the government. The German Army executed very few soldiers during the First World War (150 death sentences, of which only 48 were carried out) and although summary executions on the battlefield probably occurred and aren’t properly counted, this was in Turkey, at the heart of friendly territory. Sure, executing underlings for failure has a long tradition in arch-villainy, but it felt unnecessary here. Sure, it could be said to set up his willingness to murder more senior German officers later in the film, but his motives were very different: here it was anger and stock villainy, but there it was patriotism and lust for war.

It’s not really a spoiler to reveal that Ludendorff wasn’t Ares, despite Diana believing he had to be. It’s obvious from the outset that Diana’s simplistic view of The War To End All Wars is a mistake. Still, he made for a very good decoy antagonist, particularly with his ahistorical(!) use of weird blue gas ampoules to give himself super powers.

Okay, I did not realise that. Danny Huston also played Theo’s cousin Nigel, the government art collector, in Children of Men. That’s two things I’ve seen him in before Wonder Woman.

Dr Isabel Maru / Dr Poison

A somewhat underused character, to be honest, but also an example of the ‘Scarred Villain’ trope. Come on… in such an otherwise wonderfully progressive film, the disabled character is a villain.

That said, it was nice to see the period-accurate mask she wore over the hole in her face. Trench warfare led to a lot of facial wounds, and survivors often wore masks like that to get by in daily life. (Also, in the UK, there were special park benches, painted blue if I recall, reserved for disfigured war veterans, partly to give them privacy from people staring, but partly perhaps to avoid the social awkwardness of realising you’ve just sat down next to a gentleman with only half a face.)

During her first appearance, Steve describes her as a ‘psychopath’. He must be really into his study of psychology to be using a word like that in 1918. I guess Diana just understood the Greek translation of ‘suffering mind’ and figured, ‘Yeah, evil weapons designer, makes sense’.

Etta Candy

Good grief, that’s what her surname was? Comic books have a lot to answer for.

I’ve managed to go through all the trailers and articles about Wonder Woman without ever once placing Lucy Davis. Derp. She’s Dawn, the receptionist from The Office. Also, it’s 16 years next month since the first episode of that particular show was broadcast. I feel old.

Etta was awesome, and (like Dr Poison) felt slightly underused. Of course, this being 1918, and with most of the rest of the film being set in or beyond No Man’s Land, there’s not much scope for her to be directly involved. She certainly made the most of the London scenes though.

Ares SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING

As effective as it was for Ludendorff to turn out not to be Ares, I think the film would have worked better if Ares had been played by Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Movie. I suppose killing Ares in the origin film gives her the breathing space to do sod all for the next hundred years before she turns up in Batman Versus Superman. I do hope though that we get to see Diana in other eras in her standalone films, possibly still tying in Ares’ influence after his death, rather than how the Captain America films started in World War Two and then became modern day Avengers films.

I liked the bit earlier on where Ludendorff dismisses the idea of armistice with the (allegedly) Thucydides quote, “Peace is only an armistice in an endless war.” Diana takes that as proof positive that he is Ares, but it also fits in with Ludendorff’s socially Darwinist warrior mindset and, on a meta-level, is a clue for the audience.

Also, the presence of Ares in the film also slightly dilutes the film’s message that war is a human failing, not one by the gods. That said, there is something to be said for Ares’ argument that all he was doing was guiding humans towards an extinction that they’re determined to inflict on themselves anyway (complete with a meta-comment about how the Treaty of Versailles was a major cause of the even-more devastating Second World War).

That flashback sequence definitely included some Rogue One-style CG face-transplants. (CG faceplants?) There’s no way [censored] is that buff.

Other Thoughts

So… Steve flies a plane from the Ottoman Empire to crash it on Themyscira. This is presumably somewhere in the Mediterranean, assuming it works by normal geography. A light bomber plane of that era couldn’t get much further than that. He and Diana sail away from Themyscira, apparently spend one night asleep on the boat, and by the time Diana wakes up they’re being pulled up the Thames by a tugboat? Themiscyra can’t operate using normal physics, clearly.

After all, the fastest route from the eastern Mediterranean to London is to land on the south coast of friendly Italy, take the train through Italy and France, up to the English Channel at Calais, get a boat across to Dover and then another train up to London. You don’t sail all the way around the Iberian peninsula.

What happened to the Germans who landed in Themyscira? The Amazons only took one prisoner from the battle, and that was Steve, and then only because Diana protected him. There were several dozen of them in the landing party pursuing Steve, as well as a fairly hefty warship. Now, we saw the warship run aground when it unexpectedly found itself on an island where previously there’d been only sea, but is it seriously plausible that not a single man aboard survived that? Also, as badass as the Amazons are, a lot of the casualties they caused on the Germans during the beach battle were from arrows. Did not one of those soldiers survive those single puncture wounds? Maybe the Amazons are old-fashioned and they all developed sepsis and died.

Or maybe the Amazons murdered every last wounded or half-drowned man who wasn’t directly protected by Diana. Well, I guess they do model their society around the classical era, where that sort of thing was allowed. (Or am I overthinking this?)

The German mooks (and other soldiers, actually) were cast well as extras. They looked like just ordinary blokes conscripted to fight a war that was far bigger than they were. (This makes the apparent off-screen mass executions on Themyscira feel a bit more off.) Their innocence and youth are explicitly emphasised after Ares dies and his influence fades.

Frankly, I think that scene needed a bit of explanation, since everyone stopping fighting because Ares was dead shifted the film back towards the ‘Hitler is a Vampire’ trope, rather than the war being a thing started by humans. Sure, the classic ‘Britisher, the war is over, we are now friends,’ as seen in everything from Biggles: Pioneer Air Fighter and Sebastian Faulkes’ Birdsong, is a World War One trope, but they didn’t even do that. I dunno, maybe Ares’ death led to brief feelings of pacifism, rather than a universal rejection of conflict, and that was reflected by the Armistice being signed shortly afterwards.

As great as the No Man’s Land scene was, were there really that many Belgian villages left near the front line that still had people living in them in 1918? I guess this was post-Spring Offensive, so possibly these guys had been living behind German lines for four years after being largely ignored by the German occupiers.

I don’t know if the modern-day book-ends to the film were really necessary. It was nice to see that photo (the one they’re posing for in the header image) on a glass plate, but the Wayne Industries logo plastered everywhere, plus the final ‘somewhere a crime is happening’ moment just screamed of DC waving its arms and shouting, “Hey, remember that we’ve got a shared superhero universe franchise as well!”

You have Themyscira, and then you have the world of men. Not humans, or humanity, but men. The terminology was specific throughout the film. Partly, I guess that’s because ‘humans’ is a very science fiction term, and this is a fantasy film, but it also emphasises the contrast between the island and the rest of the world.

Speaking of Themyscira, it was lovely. The architecture, the landscapes, the sea, the Amazons themselves, all perfectly designed.

The Amazons had an interesting mix of ages as well, despite being a whole bunch of immortals.

As has been noted elsewhere, Robin Wright has gone the Leia route and grown up from being Princess Buttercup to becoming General Antiope. Meta.

This isn’t so much a review as a bullet-pointed series of thoughts that I had during and after the film.

This list will contain spoilers.

Rogue One manages to successfully do a Star Wars film in a mostly different genre to the others. The other seven films have all been adventure films set during a war, but this was definitely a war film that had tropes of adventure films in places. It was darker, more cynical and even grimier than the ‘lived-in future’ (or long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) of the previous films.

Related to the above, it was easily the most violent Star Wars film yet, and that’s including the various lightsaber-severed limbs of the other films. We had good guys murdering people (and not in the Han shooting first sense, but an actual murder of an innocent ally), some intense shoot-outs that were closer to Saving Private Ryan than A New Hope, the execution of a wounded stormtrooper with a head-shot (one of several explicit head-shots in the film), and a pretty nasty bit where a character uses a stormtrooper as a human shield. That human shield gets riddled with quite a few scorch marks.

Storm trooper armour proves yet again to be utterly incapable of stopping a blaster bolt or even a baton strike. You can see how those Ewoks took them down so easily.

The political machinations behind the Rebellion were expanded upon, without becoming as heavily ladled on as in the prequel trilogy. Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, both serving Imperial senators, are amongst the leadership of the Rebel Alliance. The Rebellion’s goal isn’t to wage war against the Empire, but to bring it down legally, by exposing its crimes to the Imperial Senate, who would then act against Emperor Palpatine. This feels more plausible than the good-versus-evil war implied by the original trilogy. It also feels plausible that there would be factions within the Rebellion that disagreed with the Mothma/Organa strategy, from Saw Gerrera’s terrorist splinter cell to General Draven’s hardline militarist attitude.

The involvement of the Senate in plotting against Palpatine also explains why the Senate is dissolved during the events of A New Hope.

The Guardians of the Whills (which is a reference to Lucas’s working title for the entire saga) are an interesting addition to canon, being a religious order that worship the Force, despite not being Force-users themselves. I can only imagine that their continued existence at the start of Rogue One is due to them being culturally irrelevant in a post-Jedi era. It also supports the idea that certain citizens of the Empire regard the Jedi and a belief in the Force as being parts of a ‘hokey religion’.

The film ends mere hours, or even minutes, before the start of Episode IV: A New Hope, and the finale is that first victory that Episode IV‘s opening crawl tells us about.

Speaking of opening crawls, this film doesn’t have one, removing it from the main saga, at least until the plot starts tying back in with the events of Episode IV.

Speaking of hope, which is explicitly referred to multiple times during the film, including by Princess Leia in her cameo, it’s already been pointed out by several websites and journalists that, thanks to Rogue One, the title ‘A New Hope’ no longer refers to Luke Skywalker. The new hope for the Rebellion and the galaxy now refers to Jyn Erso and her team’s success at finding the Death Star plans. That shifts the emphasis of Star Wars slightly, from being about badass Jedi solving or causing everyone’s problems, to the little people getting to make a difference as well. This universe is bigger than Luke Skywalker.

You know how The Phantom Menace was goddamn awful because it loved its computer-generated characters way too much? Well, Rogue One benefits from its love of CG characters. While Director Krennic has had all the publicity, he wasn’t the villain of the film. He was certainly protagonist Jyn Erso’s personal nemesis, and was integral to the development of the Death Star, but the real bad guy was Governor Tarkin, played by Guy Henry (Brutus’ sidekick Cassius in HBO’s Rome, and the Minister of Magic in Harry Potter) with Peter Cushing’s face superimposed over the top. It wasn’t a perfect effect – in a few scenes, we paid a definite visit to Uncanny Valley – but it was definitely very effective.

The presence of Tarkin enhanced Krennic’s character significantly. The feuding between rival officers, and Krennic’s pique over Tarkin’s political manouevrings, lent a certain degree of authenticity to the Empire.

As a side note, I’m pretty sure Tarkin was only ever addressed as ‘Governor’ Tarkin, the same title that Leia gave him in A New Hope. If I’m right, that means that the silly ‘Grand Moff’ title has now never been used in the film series. Tarkin’s still credited with that rank on IMDB’s entry for Rogue One, but I can still head-canon it out of existence.

The CG characters didn’t stop with Tarkin, or even with the brief appearance by Princess Leia, who was likewise superimposed onto Ingvild Deila, an actor with a very similarly-shaped face to 20-year-old Carrie Fisher. (We only saw Leia’s face for a brief moment, and I don’t think the effect worked as well as it did with Tarkin.) The faces of the X-Wing squadron leaders who don’t manage to penetrate the planetary shield at Scarif have received the same treatment, so that they look like their later appearances alongside Luke Skywalker in the attack on the Death Star.

Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are exceptions, being played by the same actors who played them in the prequel trilogy, which makes sense. However, I’m wondering about all the other faces around the table at the Rebel briefings. Pretty much every officer who’s appeared in the original trilogy is there, but are they lookalikes or CG masks?

I hope people keep working on virtual actor technology, although it’s a technology that could get creepy if misused. Imagine if the porn industry could afford it (and get around facial licensing laws – maybe claiming parody and the First Amendment)? And what happens when you’re able to put together reasonable virtual actors at home on your PC?

Orson Krennic is, insofar as I can recall, the first named Imperial character in any of the films to fire a blaster. Boba Fett is a freelance mercenary, and I don’t think Captain Phasma ever uses that lovely chrome blaster in The Force Awakens, though I’ve not watched that film since I saw it in the cinema. All other named Imperial characters have either been Sith or naval officers. Krennic nearly became the only named Imperial character to be killed with a blaster as well (all others having either been killed by Force powers or exploding spaceships or Death Stars).

Speaking of named Imperial characters, we finally get to see how goddamn terrifying it is for mundane combatants to go up against a Force-wielding opponent. Sure, we’ve seen it loads of times, particularly in the prequel trilogy, but only ever from the point of view of the force-users themselves (even dark-Anakin’s rampage was from his perspective). Pro tip: never let yourself be locked in a confined space with a Dark Lord of the Sith.

Alan Tudyk seemed to be doing his best Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) impression as K-2SO, which could have been a bad thing, but the very different personalities of those two droids meant that it didn’t feel derivative, but merely consistent, particularly since Goldenrod turns up in person for all of five seconds towards the end of the film.

Speaking of cameos, Bum-Chin and Melty-Face from the Mos Eisley cantina appeared in a brief, unnecessary, but not harmful cameo early in the film. I assume they left the planet shortly thereafter. They were every bit as obnoxious as they were in A New Hope.

Despite being a two hour film, I don’t think we really got to know any of the ‘Rogue One’ team that well, with the exception of Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso. Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera was underused, and I can’t even remember the names of the blind monk and his heavy blaster-wielding sidekick (although both were entertaining one-note characters). Cassian Andor and Bodhi Rook were pretty good though.

Jyn, as is traditional in Star Wars, had a strained family relationship that involves daddy siding with the Empire and building a Death Star. Apparently it’s a thing that happens. Unlike Luke or Leia, who both had good role models as they grew up and so turned out okay, Jyn’s adoptive parent was a terrorist who abandoned her without warning when she was sixteen. This left her a bit cynical (rather like the film, really), and very much in the neutral part of the Light-Dark spectrum. There’s still a bit of heroism in there though, and it comes right to the fore when circumstances require it.

Andor’s hardened assassin/spy was a refreshingly gritty character for a Star Wars series, particularly for a Rebel, to the extent that if he was a character in a Knights of the Old Republic video game, he’d have a red background when you looked up his stats. The manner in which he came back towards the Light Side of the Force felt natural as well. After his character-defining moment in the alleyway with the informant, his was a gradual slide back towards redemption as he developed doubts as to the orders he was receiving from General Draven. This culminates in himself leading the Rebel soldiers who decide to follow Jyn to Scarif, and issuing a brief but meaningful monologue about the terrible things that all of them have done in the name of the Rebellion. That’s him casting off of the taint on his soul, right there. Of course, this was motivated by close contact with the film’s protagonist, who was herself undergoing an awakening of heroism, and he sort of went along in her wake. That they avoided an explicit romance between them in exchange for something more comradely helped a lot.

Bodhi Rook was an interesting role for a Star Wars film: he was a normal, everyday guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances due to his own inherent goodness. (In KoToR, to continue the analogy I used for Andor, his background colour would be bright blue.) He was continually out of his depth throughout the film, and spent most of the final battle hiding, but when it came down to it, he answered the call (as he did prior to the film’s events, by defecting to the Rebellion) and died a hero.

Remember the spoiler warning?

Yeah, there’s a good reason why we don’t see most of these characters again in the later films. Alan ‘Wash from Serenity‘ Tudyk managed to set up the ‘anyone can die’ vibe again with K-2SO’s tragic end. Possibly because it was the first, and possibly because K was the comic relief, its ‘death’ had the most emotional impact. It also braced us for further deaths as well.

Jyn and Andor’s final scene on the beach worked for me, although I’ve seen others say it was pointless and they should have just done what they did the last time they were shot at by a fully operational battle station, and looked for a ship to steal. Practically, yes, they could have done that, but narratively, no. An escape into the sky would have been meaningless. Andor had completed his character arc by coming away from the Dark Side, while Jyn’s was completed when she finished off her father’s work (hmm, there’s a feminist critique in that…) by getting the Death Star plans to the Rebellion.

Still on the subject of character deaths, the minor characters in Rogue One were excellent. Most had no names, a few had a name shouted over gunfire and explosions, others had callsigns. However, lots of them had just enough personality, even if it was just in their faces, to make you care. The casting and acting of the Rebel armsmen in the Darth Vader lightsaber rampage was particularly good – they really conveyed the terror of facing a fallen Jedi in combat, while also being big damn heroes with that data-disk they were transporting. A superb scene.

So where did the film go wrong? Not many places, in my opinion. The biggest bit that I noticed was the triple-battle on Jedha. The initial attack by insurgents on an Imperial convoy was brilliant. Confusing, intense and more than a little bit Black Hawk Down or Children of Men. Then, as everyone sits down to get their breath back, more Imperials arrive and another battle starts. Then, as everyone sits down to get their breath back, even more Imperials arrive and another battle starts. Do none of them ever think about leaving the scene of that loud, explodey terrorist attack?

There were also a few moments where the stage directions appeared to say, ‘Enter half a dozen storm troopers, who are cut down by a volley of blaster fire.’ It felt a bit repetitive and forgot that the men (and possibly women, although that may just be a First Order thing) inside those suits were humans. War films are at their best when they portray the German soldiers as being just like the Allies, and too many moments where they’re just cannon fodder for the heroes detracts from that.

With that as the strongest criticism I can give at the moment, I’m awarding Rogue One: A Star Wars Story four Ewoks out of five.

Okay, while rewatching The Phantom Menace this evening (actually, it was a year ago, in the run-up to the releaseof The Force Awakens, and Facebook Memories just found this for me), I’ve come with a fix to my problems with it. Yeah, okay, this film is sixteen (EDIT: seventeen now) years old, so this has probably already been done, but this is the one I wish Lucas had made.

(This post also has a two hour run time.)

I guess there are spoilers to follow:

While attending the negotiations between the Trade Federation and Naboo, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jin bring along their protocol droid and interpreter, C3P0 (because the Trade Federation guys don’t speak English at all, and very definitely not with a racist stand-up comedian’s idea of what a Chinese accent is). When the Trade Federation try and kill them, they flee down to the planet’s surface, where they meet Jar-Jar Binks, a well-spoken, highly-competent Gungan scout who is either a muppet or a human wearing really good prosthetics, because the director’s aware that fully-CG characters using 1999 technology won’t age well.

Jar-Jar is observing the droid army’s landing. Realising that Naboo is in danger, he agrees to take them to the Gungan king, Boss Nass.

Boss Nass isn’t as convinced, thinking he can stay underwater and wait for everything on the surface to calm down, but he lets the Jedi go on their way. They say goodbye to Jar-Jar Binks and go to Naboo City to rescue Queen Amidala and her bodyguards.

As in the original version, they flee Naboo for Coruscant, to tell the Senate what’s happened. During the flight, Threepio meets R2D2, the last remaining astromech droid on the queen’s flagship. Being the only two droids on board, they bond somewhat. Unfortunately, the damage suffered during the escape means they need to make repairs before they can get to Coruscant.

They land on Tatooine to sort that out, where Qui-Gon takes both droids into town to get spare parts, and one of the queen’s handmaidens tags along to experience life on Her Majesty’s behalf. There they meet a twelve-year-old boy, Anakin Skywalker (who is played by someone who won’t hate having been a movie star when he’s older, and who is old enough to convincingly play the older Anakin in Episodes 2 and 3), and his mother, who are both slaves owned by Watto, who most definitely is not a stereotypical Space Jew.

Qui-Gon immediately notices that Anakin is strong in the Force, something that just radiates from him because it’s GODDAMN MAGIC. The kid’s also managed to build his own fully-functional racing pod, which is an incredible feat of engineering for a child with very limited financial resources, even if he is owned by a guy who runs a spaceship spare parts shop. Even more incredible is that, unlike most humans, Anakin can actually drive the damn thing without smashing into the sides of the canyon walls.

Okay, Qui-Gon thinks, we need to get this kid back to Coruscant, because he could become a powerful Jedi Knight. (He’s definitely not The Chosen One though, because that’s just tacky and cliched, even in 1999. Anakin’s just really, really Forcey.) Qui-Gon makes a deal for the hyperdrive they need, but tries to buy Anakin as well. Watto says no, but Qui-Gon, having picked up over the conversation that Watto is something of a compulsive gambler, bets that Anakin will win the pod race. Watto says there’s no chance. Qui-Gon has a good feeling about Anakin’s Force abilities and stakes both C3P0 and R2D2, in exchange for Watto staking Anakin. (Watto draws the line at Anakin’s mother, even for two droids.)

In the meantime, Anakin and the handmaiden (okay, it’s secretly Queen Amidala because Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley are interchangeable) are bonding. This time around, Padme’s flirting with someone almost the same age as her, so it doesn’t count as grooming.

The pod race arrives, Qui-Gon gives Anakin a few tips on using the Force, and it’s all wrapped up in about five minutes of tense, tightly-scripted, racing, which Anakin wins. Watto is an honourable person and doesn’t try and weasel out of his debts like he would if he was a horrible racist stereotype that we somehow managed to not have during the Star Wars films made two decades earlier.

Anakin says goodbye to his mother and promises he’ll come back and free her and all the other slaves when he’s a Jedi Knight.

As they leave, Darth Maul arrives. Badass lightsaber fight occurs, in which Maul actually says a few things using the actual actor’s mouth, rather than poorly dubbing in Peter Serafinowicz later on. (Sorry, Mr Serafinowicz, you’ve got an awesome voice, so we’ll have the battle droids say more stuff to make up for it.) The Jedi get away.

Events proceed on Coruscant much as they do in the original version of the film. Senator Palpatine continues to be awesome.

The Jedi refuse to let Qui-Gon Jin train Anakin, because he’s actually old enough to be believably too old to start training. Qui-Gon decides he’s going to do it anyway, but doesn’t bother telling anyone except for Obi-Wan, whose training he declares complete.

On the way back to Naboo, after Amidala decides she needs to end the oppression of her people, Qui-Gon gives Anakin the basics in a nice little flashback/forward to how Obi-Wan teaches Luke in Episode 4, complete with the helmet with the poorly-designed visor.

On Naboo, they meet up again with Jar-Jar Binks. Turns out that Jar-Jar has been aiding the Naboo resistance in their campaign against the Trade Federation, against Boss Nass’s orders to remain neutral. When the Trade Federation turned on the Gungans, Jar-Jar was promoted to general, partly because of his foresight and skill at warfare, and partly because that’s how easy it is to advance up the military hierarchy in the galaxy far, far away (paging generals Solo and Calrissian…). The Gungans launch a diversionary assault against droid forces, leading to a battle in which all the close-up shots of droids or Gungans are stop-motion or actors respectively, because CG is still too primitive to do close-ups (Spielberg knew that in Jurassic Park, for god’s sake).

Anakin is deemed a decent enough pilot (what with his pod-racing experience) to accompany the orbital segment of the battle, which he does with extreme competence, eventually destroying the droid control ship in a way that isn’t even the slightest bit accidental. As in the original, he has R2D2 in his ship, but in general the parallels with his son’s first space combat are a bit more pronounced.

Meanwhile, Amidala and the Jedi infiltrate the palace to do their big damn hero stuff, and all this goes according to the original script. Qui-Gon dies, closely followed by Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan promises to continue Anakin’s training.

We get to the ending, there’s a bit of smiley chemistry between Amidala and Anakin during the ceremony at the end, and Jar-Jar is rewarded for his heroism in the Battle of Naboo by being made senator now that Palpatine is chancellor. The newly-knighted Obi-Wan reveals to the Jedi Council that Anakin is already partly-trained, so somebody better finish the job, and he did kind of promise Qui-Gon, and Yoda wouldn’t want him to break a promise, would he? Yoda reluctantly agrees to let Obi-Wan take on Anakin as an apprentice.